When Donald Trump announced his grandiose plan for trade tariffs on April 2, 2025 some people cringed, others cheered, and a few called their lawyers.
One of those was Rick Woldenberg, the CEO of a family-owned company in Vernon Hills, Illinois a suburb of Chicago. His firm, Learning Resources, outsources the majority of the manufacturing of its products made of plastic to Chinese firms. My wife, Risa, is an educational therapist and we have some of their products in her home office.
Woldenberg’s company was founded in 1984, but predecessor companies started by family members go back 100 years.
Learning Resources is not an enormous publicly held company. Huge Chicago companies like McDonalds or AbbVie would never challenge the Trump administration because the publicity might hurt their stock prices and cost the CEOs their jobs.
But Rick Woldenberg could feel the pain of the tariffs from day one. He was an owner, a founder, with longtime customers and connections. He was also selling to school districts which had already placed orders for the year.
Unlike most of us who would have complained to our wives and associates and then grumbled, Rick Woldenberg, small business founder, decided to sue.
Fortunately, in America when we believe the federal or state or local government has overstepped the law, we can go to court and try to reverse the course of action.
In a challenge like this, there are law firms and donors who will join a guy like Woldenberg so he is not fighting an expensive uphill battle, possibly headed to the Supreme Court, by himself. In this case, Learning Resources and Woldenberg were represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA).
Another firm, Liberty Justice Center, filed a separate but related lawsuit on behalf of a New York wine importer, V.O.S. Selections.
So, two nonprofit public-interest law firms representing small privately-held firms challenged executive overreach and ultimately won a 6-3 decision last week.
President Donald Trump fervently believes tariffs, no matter how he justifies them, are the right policy for the country.
After showing his disdain for the Court and the decision with particular anger aimed at Justices Gorsuch and Coney Barrett who he appointed, Trump instituted a blanket 15% tariff which confuses the world.
That is one of the big problems with Trump’s tariff approach—confusion. And when businesses do not know what their costs will be from one day to another they tend to sit tight.
In our machinery business we felt this inaction acutely.
It appeared this year that companies and countries had generally adjusted to Trump’s tariffs and were going to take a more aggressive stance toward action in 2026.
But now things are chaotic again. Stocks fell sharply on Monday. The Chinese must be laughing at America’s back and forthing. The Europeans are already a mess with China eating their lunch on electric cars.
In the United States, in our little corner of industry, we see 6061 aluminum barstock up almost 50% in price since “Liberation Day.”
But we still have folks like Rick Woldenberg of Learning Resources in America. Tariffs will be challenged again. Congress may wake up. The midterm elections may force Donald Trump to pivot.
Hang in there folks. Tariffs are temporary. Egg prices have fallen.
Unfortunately, ego has not.
Question: How has the rise of metal prices affected your business?
4 Comments
There is a small component I buy and modify for a local company and I also produce many machined parts for them. I was sourcing the raw component through the UK (who knows where it was made). It got hung up due to tariffs due to origin of melt???. I ended up sourcing it from a screw machine shop in Connecticut. In order to get the price right for my customer we had to increase volume a little, but it seemed like a win-win.
I can’t defend tariffs on this story alone, but it has at least got conversations going. The status quo swing of American politics for the last 50 years has seen our manufacturing industry gutted. At least he’s trying to help. The chaos is not productive, but hopefully future politicians will acknowledge that the playing field has not been level for domestic manufacturing.
We are experiencing the same thing.
Tariff are designed bring industry back to the US.
US suppliers of the same item we get from China have increased there prices do to tariffs.
US MFG are dealing with increased cost of raw goods and spreading the added cost do to tariffs across the board.
We import as little as possible.
Its hitting us hard.
Dale Burow
GM of Nanofilm
How you feel about tariffs is primarily based on whether they help or hurt you.
Rick Woldenberg would have cared less if the tariffs hit and finally stopped a Chinese competitor from undercutting his grossly overpriced $30 buckets of plastic by flooding Amazon with identical products selling for less than his TMC.
Why didn’t he just find an American manufacturer to make his product? Oh, that’s right- they all closed their factories down decades ago because it became impossible to turn profit.
And wow, poor manufacturers are paying 50% more for aluminum.
The bigger question is how did the US go from supplying 80% of the world’s aluminum from 30 smelting operations in 1981 to now supplying 2% from the four remaining plants. You think maybe some of those at the 26 shuttered plants may have had a slightly different take on tariffs had they occurred years ago?
Not MAGA, not Trump lover …. but look around, look at the industry you supply – our consumerism drives us to constantly seek MORE for LESS regardless of long term consequences.
Separate politics out of all of this. As a country we would be in such a better place if we problem solved objectively rather than use every and any opportunity to try and beatup political opponents.
Someone once pointed out, China would love to sell America the very rope they hang themselves on, and America would gladly buy it … because the price was cheap enough.
Someone finally just stepped in and forced an increase on the price of rope.
Just remember where and when this mess got started, back in the 1990s when some very large companies convinced Ronald Reagan and the congress of the time that America should not waste its time and resources on manufacturing, because foreign countries could do it so much cheaper. We were to send all of our children to four year colleges, and most of them to grad school, where they would learn to get rich selling pieces of paper to one another. That did not work out so well in afterthought. Not only did we destroy much of our manufacturing ability, we also no longer have electricians, plumbers, mechanics, or other essential tradespeople that keep the country running.